


Ashling

by RembrandtsWife



Series: Northumberland [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Dreams, Fawnlock, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 21:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Was he awake right now, or was he dreaming? How the hell was he supposed to tell the difference, in a world where a being like Fawnlock was real?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashling

**Author's Note:**

> Fawnlock is the glorious creation of Paula (bennyslegs). This story will not make a lick of sense unless you have read the earlier stories in the series. Thank you for your attention.

John Watson was dreaming.

As a boy, he had had many curious dreams which he often remembered quite well. Uncle Hamish liked to hear him talk about his dreams over a mug of cocoa at the breakfast table; John had even written some of them down, since they were more like stories which he had read than like ordinary, fragmentary dreams, repetitions and variations of things that happened in everyday life.

In medical school he had ceased to dream of anything but those repetitions, when he had time to dream at all: checking the same chart over and over, suturing the same incision, drinking the same lukewarm cup of overbrewed coffee. In Afghanistan, and after, he had studied the art of forgetting his dreams. He had not succeeded in doing so until he settled into the cottage.

Now John Hamish Watson was dreaming again, and it was like one of the story-dreams of his childhood. He was running through the forest, a green and summer forest, green and gold with the shafts of light that fell between the whispering, dancing leaves. He was running easily, lightly, as if he were a boy, not almost forty, hale, not wounded, joyous, never touched by war.

The wind was rustling louder and louder through the trees, their trunks as well as their boughs were moving, the live wood creaking, less like the creaking of old doors and cabinets than like the tuning up of woodwinds in an orchestra. The forest was getting ready to make music, all around him, and he wanted to join in, he wanted to laugh and shout and sing--

He was at Fawnlock's place, the spring in the heart of the forest, the mysterious stones. His chest was heaving, his heart throbbing, but he wasn't winded or sore or tired. No, in fact, he was hard in his trousers, his prick standing up, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing, too, each separate hair on his head standing at attention and listening. Listening.

The cry comes from the other side of the spring: A deep, powerful bellow, a sound that is utterly not human. Humans cannot make their voices ring throughout the forest. Humans do not sound like the trees groaning, deep rivers running, thunder rolling.  
Around him the forest changes, from full summer to early winter in a breath. Bare branches caress the sky; fallen leaves carpet the earth. Only the pines stand green, glittering with morning frost.

Then the cry is repeated, and a wind rises at John's back, pushing at him. He takes a step forward. It comes a third time, and he goes hot and cold all over, recognizing his own name in that inhuman call.

"John!"

He takes another step forward, and Fawnlock comes into view. His antlers seem larger than John has ever seen them. A ruff of deep reddish-brown fur graces his shoulders and collarbones; his belly is fleecy, his gracile legs sport long white plumes of hair. And his cock is just as hard as John's, and a good bit larger, with a strong curve that's strangely like the curve of an antler, and it's pointing toward John--

And he was awake, with splashes of come just beginning to cool on his belly.

"I'm too old for this," he muttered, sponging off in the bathroom. After a piss, he went ahead and started the shower. Too old for wet dreams, coming in his sleep like a teenager. Too old for fairy tales, men with antlers who walked out of the forest shadows, who talked in an old language but could manage a broken English. Too old to be living on his own, in a forest haunted by his childhood memories, childhood stories, and things that didn't exist.

The hot water carried away the lingering smell of semen, but here he was. Alone, wounded, in a cottage, in the forest.

He'd gotten home after his last trip into town and noticed that things were… a bit off. Books and cushions moved in the living room. A package of luncheon meat gone, a damp towel on the kitchen floor, bread and jam and a sticky knife left out, and he knew he wasn't the culprit. Even before he looked in the bedroom, he had deduced that Fawnlock had gotten into the cottage while he was out. Tricky bugger, John didn't know he could do that.

Then he'd hit the bedroom and stopped. The whole room smelled of… wild. The woolly scent of Fawnlock's fur and the sharp undertones of his sweat. The smells of leaf and dirt and mushroom he always seemed to bring with him, as if the forest itself came indoors when he did. And something different. Something--

John spotted a flash of red on the duvet. He started to pick it up, and it was *wet*. He dropped it, but now the smell was on his hands. Oh.

He'd been wearing an old pair of red pants in bed. He'd had a wank under the covers, before he got up, and wiped himself off with the pants, dropped them on the floor. Fawnlock, maybe, had found them, maybe he came in here to sleep on the bed--a thing which John had so far forbidden him--maybe he smelled John on the fabric and--

He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about Fawnlock being aroused by his smell and rubbing off on it, leaving his scent on top of John's. He hadn't thought about it. But obviously he had thought about it, on some level, because he was dreaming about it.

They had become friends, he supposed. Two solitary beings, encountering one another, having little in common except their solitude. At least, John never saw any other antlered humanoids like Fawnlock, or any other part-human, part-animal creatures. Fawnlock did not show up at his door with a hungry family in tow. But he did show up. Sometimes he appeared at the cottage, always at the back door. Sometimes he joined John on walks through the forest, gliding out of the shadows with barely a rustle and scaring John half to death. John didn't seek him out, but he didn't have to. The deer-man had become a fixture in his life, if an unpredictable one.

When Fawnlock came to the cottage, he was usually hungry and always curious. The hunger could be sated, especially by sweets; he had a sweet tooth that would put a five-year-old to shame. John had found that he would eat almost anything, bread, jam, honey, pastries, but also stew, luncheon meat, salads. The only things he tried and thereafter refused were tuna, from a tin, of course, and dairy products. He rejected cottage cheese and yogurt emphatically, actually spitting the yogurt out on the table, all over the table. He would not even drink milk, though he took to black tea at once and put vast quantities of honey in it.

Once his hunger was sated, he often wanted to nap, and blithely took up the whole sofa. No doubt he'd been scheming for a while to try out the bed. But an awake Fawnlock was an inquisitive Fawnlock, a Fawnlock who wanted to peruse every book, caress every textile, open and close every door, investigate every electrical device. He was every bit as dexterous with his hands as any human, as dexterous as a burglar, in fact. Sometimes his endless curiosity was annoying, but most of the time John enjoyed watching his ears swish, his tail flick, his nose wrinkle, his tongue appear and disappear as he poked and pried and licked and sniffed and looked and listened.

When he found John in the forest, he became a teacher rather than a student. In his hoarse, broken speech, with a good deal of gesturing and pantomime, he showed John the subtleties of his world: What mushrooms and other fungus were edible, and which poisonous; what smear on a leaf, what broken twig, what scratch across the bark of a tree-trunk meant the presence of an animal; where birds, squirrels, and other creatures made their nests and their dens, and how to avoid disturbing them. Under Fawnlock's tutelage, John got a glimpse of the forest as an interconnecting whole, a network of people, places, and things at least as complex and rich as any city.

"Who are you, Fawnlock?" he asked, one chilly October day. "Why are you here? What do you do?"

He didn't really expect to get an answer, or not one that made sense, but the deer-man drew himself up and looked at John soberly. "I am ward--warden. I ward. I," he turned up his eyes and ears, searching for the word, "I guard. I guard the wood."

"You are the guardian?"

"Yes!" Fawnlock dipped his head, a single emphatic nod. "The guardian of the wood."

Roaming the woods with Fawnlock, and eventually seeing various animals--first birds and insects, then squirrels, then foxes--approach the faun and in some fashion communicate with him, John had to admit that it made sense, for mad, fairy-tale values of sense. Fawnlock, halfway between deer and man, between this world and some other, was somehow in charge of the forest and its inhabitants, and they resorted or reported to him.

The days had shortened, and the cheery voices on the radio had reminded John to set his clocks back for Standard Time, and suddenly October was almost over. Standing by the stove, frying eggs and bacon, John looked at the calendar hung on the refrigerator and realized it was almost Halloween. All Hallows' Eve. His shoulders twitched, not quite a shiver. 

It was while he was washing up that another of those strange old words floated up from the bottom of his mind, from the well of his childhood memories and the cadences of Uncle Hamish's stories. Samhain. The old Gaelic name for Halloween, summer's end, the start of winter, a time as uncanny in the old tales as Halloween was later called. 

It was also the time of year when deer mated.

John dried his hands, hung up the dish towel neatly on the handle of the oven door, and fetched his cap and jacket. Nothing to do but go for a walk. 

He didn't consciously set out to find his way to Fawnlock's lair. He'd tried to do so a couple of times, but so far he'd been unable to find it on his own. He always saw the same rocks and spring, the same massive trees, when he went there with Fawnlock; if he didn't know better, he'd think the location of the lair moved about somehow, eluding him. So he just headed out the back door and started walking.

Until he fetched up at the edge of the clearing that housed Fawnlock's spring and cave.

John stood still for a moment, hands clenching and unclenching. Then he saw movement: The faun emerging from his cave, swinging his head from side to side, and then leaping from rock to rock, springing toward John.

For a moment he thought the faun was going to charge him, gore him with those astonishing antlers, trample him with cervid hooves. He stood his ground, and Fawnlock dashed up and came to a halt, as lightly and beautifully as a ballet dancer. He huffed loudly, his chest rising and falling.

"John," he said, and inclined his head. His dark nostrils widened; his tilted his head and leaned closer. "John," he said, his voice deeper, his pronunciation closer to the way he preferred to say it, more like "Sean". Then he did something John had never seen him do: He smiled.

It was the most human expression John had ever seen on the deer-man's face, although he kept his lips closed and did not show his teeth. His nose crinkled across the bridge, as did the corners of his eyes. For a moment he looked child-like, playful, harmless. Then with one step and his hand on John's neck, he closed the distance between them and sniffed at John.

Annoyed, embarrassed, maybe even a little scared, John held still. Fawnlock might be able to speak in his own tongue, he might be able to pick up English scary fast, he might be paranormal or supernatural in some way, but when it came to his senses, Fawnlock was an animal. He relied on taste and smell far more than a mere human; his hearing, too, seemed more acute than humanly possible. John had had to get used to being sniffed occasionally--not to mention that his food, his clothing, his possessions, and anything unusual they encountered in the forest got thoroughly huffed--but this, this was different. Fawnlock stood closer than John liked, his own scent of sweat and earth and fur acutely noticeable, and whuffed at John's hair, at his neck, at his breath--John jerked his head back, not ready for lip contact or whatever--and finally at his hands, stooping and gathering them to his nose.. John was half expecting Fawnlock to check out his crotch or his bum, convinced that Fawnlock knew about the wet dream. He was relieved when the deer-man only licked his palm--relieved by something that would have freaked him out a few months ago.

Fawnlock rose to his feet, still looming over John, and emitted a torrent of excited speech in his own language. He looked at John expectantly, obviously hoping to be understood. His face fell and he took two steps back when John shook his head, showed his frustration on his face and with spread hands, "I don't understand, I'm sorry, no, I don't understand."

Fawnlock was silent for a moment, arms crossed over his chest. Then he touched John, just where his jaw joined his ear and his skull, bent in, and said one word which, although he didn't understand it, stayed clear and distinct in his memory:

"Ashling."

John woke up. He was lying on the sofa, wearing his jacket as if he had gone out, but with his bare feet propped up on the arm. They were cold. Had he gone out? Hadn't he gone out after making breakfast and somehow found his way to Fawnlock's clearing? But he never found Fawnlock's clearing on his own, only when the fawn was with him. Had he only dreamed he went there, saw Fawnlock, and heard him say a great many words of his own language, only one of which John could remember: "Ashling." Had he only dreamt that he woke up from a wet dream?

He swung his legs to the floor, swearing--he was as stiff as though he'd been lying asleep for some time--and fumbled to his feet. Once he had taken off his jacket and put on his socks and shoes, he made himself a cuppa, and then it was time to fire up the search engines again and see if he could track down this mysterious word.

A fortuitous typo led him to the word "aisling", an Irish-language word which was pronounced "ashling", if he was reading the little phonetic symbols correctly, and it meant dream, or vision. The aisling was a specific type of poem in Irish literature, the recounting of a dream. It was frequently associated with Otherworldly beings and Otherworldly lovers.

John sat chewing his lip, the Wikipedia article still on the screen. A dream that wasn't merely a dream. A dream that was also a vision, a dream that was more true than waking life. Was he visiting Fawnlock in ashling? Was the deer-man visiting him? Was he awake right now, or was he dreaming? How the hell was he supposed to tell the difference, in a world where a being like Fawnlock was real?


End file.
